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Pedophile threat closes Microsoft chat rooms

Doctor Q

Doctor Q

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Sep 19, 2002
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Microsoft Corp. announced Wednesday it will shut down its Internet chat rooms in 28 countries as of October 14, saying the forums had become a haven for peddlers of junk e-mail and sex predators.

"The straightforward truth of the matter is free unmoderated chat isn't safe," said Geoff Sutton, European general manager of Microsoft MSN, told Reuters.

The move affects MSN chat services in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and much of Latin America. Millions of message board users will be forced to find alternative online forums to discuss the topics of the day.

In the United States, Canada and Japan, Microsoft will introduce an unsupervised chat service solely for subscribers, who are considered more accountable because their billing details and identities are on record with the company.

"It's a signal that some of the joyful early days of the Internet have moved on a bit," Sutton said.
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Yup, just saw about this this morning, I'm amazed they're actually doing it, but it's a good thing, and will give Microsoft a good image boost I think.

edit: typo ;)
 
Yeah, just saw this on the news tonight... chat rooms are kinda problematic aren't they.

I'll stick with IM'ing...
 
hey, I'm all for children's safety (I'm on the board of directors for a local kid's summer camp...) and I applaud the move, but I'm skeptical about how blown-out-of-proportion the whole "chat rooms grooming kids for abuse" thing is.

I don't doubt that it can happen. The cases that these news stories keep quoting are proof of that. But these are still quite isolated incidents (and high profile) compared to the much LARGER number of kids who are abused by people they already know and trust.

Heck, I've even seen stories warning parents to be careful of your kids' webcamming habits, as apparently some have figured out that if they do a striptease at the right webcam site, perverts will reward them by buying them stuff on their Amazon wishlist or something or other. Seems pretty bizarre to me, but my first thought was: I don't know *anybody* with a webcam, let alone a kid whose got one in his/her own room.
:confused:

The Internet sure can be a sick place, but the real world is still worse on the whole.
 
Originally posted by notjustjay
The Internet sure can be a sick place, but the real world is still worse on the whole.
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Maybe it's time to close that too.

I read an article a few days ago about a very young fashion model, still in middle school, and the article discussed the dangers she faced by her early entry into a business that is "selling sex" and with adults all around her. But she and her parents were aware of this danger, and that counts for a lot. It's the kids that nobody is watching (other than on webcams) that get in trouble the most.
 
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